


If I Could Tell Him

by ileavetheroomsmiling, talkingtothesky



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Denial of Feelings, Episode: s04e17 Karma, Gen, Harold Finch & Root | Samantha Groves Friendship, Introspection, M/M, Minor Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw, Other, POV Harold Finch, Pining, Post-Canon, Repression, Self-Acceptance, Time Skips, Unrequited Love, also in post-canon there is nonbinary they/she sameen shaw for Fun and Plot, alternatively: harold finch deals with having emotions, an exercise in being gentle with yourself, artist cover art and gifs embedded please leave on creator style, i have a barely comprehensible 2am notes app from when i first watched karma, it's about allowing for the conscious integration of all aspects of the self, this bang gave me a reason to elaborate, this is functionally emotional whump and 'shane edwards is a harold finch mirror' meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ileavetheroomsmiling/pseuds/ileavetheroomsmiling, https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: If he could go back to his teenage years, college, even, he would tell his younger self to just admit it. To admit the way he looked at Nathan. To admit the way he wanted him.Despite all of its groundbreaking capabilities, though, the Machine hadn’t quite allowed for time travel. So here he was. Like this, with John, with Nathan and without Nathan.Or: Harold nearly manages a fourth wall break of 4x17 “Karma” fueled solely by gay repression.
Relationships: Harold Finch & Nathan Ingram, Harold Finch & Root | Samantha Groves, Harold Finch/John Reese, one-sided Harold Finch/Nathan Ingram
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	If I Could Tell Him

**Author's Note:**

> created for the Person of Interest Big Bang 2020 - fic written by ileavetheroomsmiling, cover art and gifs made by talkingtothesky

Harold sat down at the Subway desk and clicked open the video-feed from the pen-camera he slyly placed in Dr. Edwards’ office during his session. There he was, returned to his office, an office Harold had feared he might only return to with blood on his hands—or not at all, had his plan to frame Wyatt Morris gone uninterrupted by Harold and John. He watched as Edwards stared meaningfully at the framed photo of his dead wife Lucy, and Harold couldn’t help but be reminded of the ever-so-carefully (ever-so-secretly) stored photograph he kept of himself and Nathan during their younger days.

_"In the beginning...N.I."_

Hidden away inside _The Ghost in the Machine,_ Harold hadn’t quite been able to part with that photograph of the two of them. Especially not with Nathan’s handwriting on the back of it. He could recognize his script at a glance, and keeping the photo affirmed his continued ability to do so despite the fact that Nathan would never write anything for him again. He had picked a fitting book to protect the photo with, when he roamed the aisles one lonely night, a few weeks after the Ferry incident, searching the shelves of his library—or was it their library? But Nathan had bought it for him. Just because he was fretting over the bought of library closures and defunding throughout the city. 

Harold glanced back up as he heard the door to Edwards’ office click open. There was a woman, the woman Edwards had enlisted to watch his dog Hector—perhaps permanently, Harold realized, seeing as Edwards seemed to have been accepting of a future where he vengefully framed Wyatt Morris for his own self-inflicted death.

|  |   
---|---|---  
  
He watched the distant yet fond way that Edwards spoke with the woman, his eyes brightening when she suggested they walk the dog together sometime. Harold felt something akin to disappointment take hold of him when the offer wasn’t immediately accepted, but he supposed that Edwards needed a little bit of time to think through the events of last night.

As Edwards and Becca finished their amicable exchange, Harold shut down his computer (but kept the pen-stream running just in case anything more of note happened with Edwards) and grabbed Bear’s leash. A dog walk didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Harold knew John would be stationed out at the park, scrutinizing Morris’ body language and interactions for any suspicious behavior that could clue them into his potential guilt or innocence regarding the death of Edwards’ wife Lucy.

As Bear rose to walk by his side, Harold paused and considered how he himself was taking Becca’s suggestion to Edwards of a shared dog-walking outing. He didn’t care to think about what that meant for him and John. Or he did, really, but he had barely slept at all after talking down Edwards and he just knew he didn’t have it in him to put any productive mental energy toward figuring out what John was to him, what he _wanted_ John to be to him.

He made his way out of the labyrinth of the covert pathways that connected their beloved Subway to the outside world and started his usual stroll to the park. He passed a flower shop and was reminded of the unfitting air of the calm botanical garden scenery that he faced as he pleaded with Edwards just hours earlier not to condemn Wyatt Morris, the very place Edwards had proposed to Lucy.

Edwards had been ready to destroy himself to punish Morris. Looking back, Harold doubted that he could have had the empathy needed to talk Edwards out of that potentiality if he hadn’t gone through what he did after Nathan’s death. He had come up as a number. His own machine, the one he built with Nathan, had identified him as a threat to one Alicia Corwin. 

That was years ago, but it surely didn’t feel that way to Harold. He knew the team considered him their moral center, the one who could always be trusted to uphold guiding principals and ethical boundaries…

...What would they think of him if they knew what he had planned to do to Corwin? He figured it was a zero-sum game at this point seeing as she had been killed by their very own Root back when they only knew her as the softspoken psychotherapist Caroline Turing but it still pulled at him. The team trusted him to know what was right, to pull them back toward a commitment to the potential goodness in any and all people when Shaw got a little too detached or John a bit too pragmatic. 

If only they had seen him then. Unassuming in his bland coat, hat, and scarf, but carrying a controller for a bomb with enough force to disintegrate Alicia Corwin’s car and another five-foot radius surrounding it. Making phone calls with a voice modulator to threaten what he had constructed to be her impending doom, her punishment for taking Nathan away from the world. From their world, the one they had built in college dorms and two-bedroom apartments and unnecessarily large office buildings… 

Their little world, the one that opened up to them, sometimes Arthur, then Olivia and Grace, and eventually Will too, but Harold knew that deep down he just thought of it as theirs. 

“Harold and Nathan,” everyone had affirmed, “always together, always working on the next new thing.” They had been a duo, complementary and challenging in the best ways, always pushing each other to expand their conceptions of technological possibility, to oblige themselves to do the best they could for the world as a whole.

And Harold had loved it. 

Had loved _him—_

“Finch.”

“Hello, Mr. Reese.”

Harold wondered if they would keep up the formalities of titles and surnames forever. It had become sort of comforting, a reassurance of the patterns of their conversations, but he also felt that the formality prevented some more personal breeches in discussion.

“I see Bear is glad you’ve wrapped up your notes on Edwards. Is he settled back into his office?”

“Yes, he seems to be doing rather well, in stark contrast to the state he was in last night. That other person from their office-building—Becca—returned with his dog, Hector, the one you packed me the treats to distract with, and offered to him that they go and walk it together sometime.”

John looked at Bear. “Did he take her up on that offer?”

Keeping his gaze toward down the path they walked, Harold considered how John would interpret each of his answers to that question. Harold felt like his Machine, going through the options and mentally evaluating their possible reactions: how he described Edwards, which words he used to articulate the tone of Becca’s offer for further interaction, what he considered her offer to even be.

“I believe so, Mr. Reese.”

“Good. He needs something to do that’s not just grief-fueled vigilante justice and attempts at revenge for his wife’s death.”

“I agree. I do hope he figures out how to grieve his wife without that sense of loss consuming him.”

They turned a corner and John nodded. Harold remembered that John had had a session with Dr. Campbell earlier that day and hoped he hadn’t struck a chord with something relating to Jessica.

Harold turned his eyes back forward as he felt John prepare to start speaking again.

“You know, Finch, you really saw into his mind from the get-go. When Fusco and I were listening in to your ‘session’ with Edwards this morning, it felt like you knew exactly what he would have the understanding of to counsel you on.”

 _Damn him_ , Harold thought. _Damn_ _his perceptiveness and keenness for what others tried to hide_. It was like he wanted to talk to John and didn’t at the same time. Hell, he had actually wanted to talk to Edwards in their ‘session,’ the man knew so well what he himself had been through, even if Harold had modified the specifics for secrecy’s sake.

Harold used a readjustment of his grip on Bear’s leash as an excuse not to meet John’s gaze and smiled. “I do understand the principles of victim’s rights advocacy, Mr. Reese. You know I always prepare knowledge on the backgrounds of our numbers before going in for an inquiry like that.”

The wind was getting less and less chilly as they made their way away from the waterfront, but Harold didn’t feel that comfort sink in. He was the general of an internal war, the bold and carefree urge to let John into his past and the protective and self-sufficient commitment to being unknown.

Harold felt a strange sort of warmth inside him when John didn’t match his dismissive tone, though. _This man._

“Of course, Finch. I just meant that you seemed to connect with him.”

Harold didn’t reply.

“You know, back in the beginning when I still didn’t trust you, I followed you to your meetup with Will Ingram. That’s when it came together for me. Why he’s the only one you still interact with after everything,” John finished.

If Harold needed a couple more seconds than was acceptable to formulate his response to John’s new line of conversation, who could blame him. He knew that John had been tracking him in those days, but he never held it against him; it just showed him that his own value of knowledge and secrecy was matched by his new colleague.

Harold pulled on an air of exasperation anyway. “Mr. Reese, can I not allow myself one part of my old life?” _No,_ Harold realized, _I really don’t think I can. Not this part, anyway. Not his son._

Again, John resisted the combative inclination to match Harold’s defensive tone and said “You know what I mean, Finch. Between that photo from the safe and your old ‘work’ building— and I’ve seen the news stories. From that ferry bombing.”

“I’d rather not get into this right now, Mr. Reese. We surely have more important matters to be dealing with.”

“We just tagged Morris, you made sure Edwards got settled back in, and there are no new numbers up right now.”

“There’s more to deal with, more to plan,” Harold countered, just a little desperate.

Deep down, Harold could appreciate John’s intention. Recently, they had been offering each other more and more of their lives... 

“Alright, Harold. It’s time we both turn in for the night, or day, I guess. That was an intense case. It’s time we get some rest. Are you set to take Bear?”

_Harold._

A wave of gratitude for noticing his mood but not worsening it swept through Harold’s mind. “Right you are, Mr. Reese. And I do believe that Bear will be quite alright accompanying me back for the night, huh.” Harold nodded at the dog who wagged his tail in response. “I’ll see you the others tomorrow.”

When he looked over to John, the two of their paths starting to diverge, Harold thought that he had looked like he wanted to say something more. _Not right now,_ he thought. _Not when I’m feeling him more than I have in years._

“Take it easy, Finch. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And with that, it was Harold and Bear, making their way back to rest for the night. No, day. The emotional climax of Edwards’ frustration had led Harold to feel compelled to see Edwards home, at least back to his office. That meant he hadn’t started recovering from the tumultuous day until well past midnight, and plagued by racing thoughts charged up from this particularly understandable number, he had managed only a few hours of sleep.

As he walked away, he ruminated on the conversation he had just gotten out of with John. John was right, he hardly had to put on an act to pass as a client seeking counseling with Edwards, seeking his expertise in coping with violent events. For a second or two, he almost forgot that he was there for investigating this number, for a second he imagined a life where he allowed himself a therapist and an openness that he had denied himself since he was young and still had his father. Well, with one small exception.

No, who was he kidding? Harold knew that allowing Nathan into his life (his heart) was no small thing. As he let Bear take over guiding him through a more crowded intersection, he let his mind wander back to the days that started it all.

Harold, excited for college but not quite ready for the people there. Nathan, soaking in the social praises and academic rigor alike, always making friends, always being big. Harold remembered the first time they had talked; he was more than a little intimidated by Nathan. He laughed at that feeling now. _How could I have ever been scared of him?_

What kind of sadistic cycle of life was he trapped in that he felt the same apprehension now regarding Nathan? But it wasn’t that he was scared of the charming and well-spoken stranger, shining, tall and blonde in all of his young-adult glory; no, he was scared of what everything that came after then meant for him _now._

And Harold hated it. He hated how his memories of Nathan now came along with an additional yet unwanted ounce of anxiety and aversion. Hated how he couldn’t even talk about the person he had spent decades with, side by side as they studied, started their professional work, and of course, eventually developed the Machine.

He remembers the days spent holed up in their office building meant for thousands of workers, filled to the brim with only their enjoyment of each other’s company and hunger to bring the Machine to life. The long days and longer nights were far more exhausting than any of the all-nighters he pulled working on a new project that would mark him as an exceptional student within his college courses all those years ago, but the strength and happiness from those times still fueled him today and he wouldn’t trade that for any amount of much-needed sleep.

He thought of the way Nathan would always take up the business side of their operations, knowing Harold wasn’t the type to sit through board meetings or make nice with potential investors. He just wanted to teach the Machine into being, and Nathan always let him. Harold never had to worry about that aspect of their work; he was always grateful for Nathan’s accommodation of his preference for small social settings and limited stranger-interactions. 

_Accommodation,_ Harold pondered. _A little bit of protection too._ Nathan had always felt safe to Harold. Even when his smile was winning hearts or his clear voice taking up a room, he always managed to notice if Harold was worried about something or simply needed anything from him.

Finally, Harold realized that Bear had led them back home and was waiting to enter.

“ _Vrij_ , go on in.” He had never thought of himself as one for pets, but here he was. He had never thought of himself as one for high-level government operatives who quit their jobs and almost drank themselves to death over crushing grief either, really. But when he really let himself consider the conditions of his life now, which was rarely, he was never really shocked.

Nathan and John were more alike than not, he supposed. Besides their physical similarities in height, build, and the like, they were both very smart people with very distinct personalities. Harold remembered Arthur smugly telling him that “Harold Wren sure does have a type” when they were at some conference presentation and Harold had been admiring one of the speakers who preceded Nathan. “I do not!” Harold had replied, blushing, but his grin had let Arthur know that he conceded the assessment.

As he unclasped Bear’s leash and sat down on his desk chair, Harold allowed himself to consider what John had said (had asked) earlier. If there was a world in which Harold Finch allowed himself a therapist, a friend, _a family,_ it sure as hell wasn’t this one. Not after Nathan had died. Not after he and Grace had to part. Not after Will lost a parent and Olivia lost hope in him as a husband and then lost him forever. Not in this world, where the people he most interacted with on a daily basis fell into one of two categories: highly trained operatives or people caught up in some scheme leading to violence and death, usually of their own making—sometimes the people he met were both. 

With a glance over to the right, Harold was pleased to see Bear napping contently on the dog bed. Then, he was struck with the similarity of his experience of the past 24 hours to that of their number, Shane Edwards. Here they both were now, with their dogs, after a day of work, either having gone on or planned to go on a walk with someone they worked closely with and shared the care of a dog.

Harold allowed himself a tired scoff at the similarities. Maybe he was just reading too much into the number, hoping to see someone who could understand him, know him, without him having to actually put his own story into words. 

He knew the Machine had near-infinite simulatory capabilities. More times than he cared to admit, he had considered asking it to show him how his life could have turned out if Nathan hadn’t… but this was how it was. Nathan had. _Died_ , Harold thinks. _He died, and I’m here, and who am I to be upset that he’s not here with me when I’m the one who escaped with only a few lingering injuries._ As soon as Edwards acting as a therapist had mentioned his wife, talked about her with that tone of voice, shown her photograph with such reverence, Harold had known. He had known he’d understand this number, had known without a doubt in the garden what Edwards wanted and why he wanted it.

Edwards was wracked with guilt and grief but had no one to witness him through it. Their early research into him as a number had shown that he and Lucy didn’t keep in touch with a lot of family. They didn’t have a very wide social circle of friends or work acquaintances, but they were content with their respective therapy and photography. When Lucy had died, Edwards had pulled into himself and there was no one there to unravel him.

Harold felt that pain, felt it deep in his chest. Walking away from Grace mere seconds after he had watched Nathan pronounced dead was hardly more than a blur in Harold’s barely-conscious mind at that point after the ferry disaster, but he could _feel_ it as clearly as the water they had just walked along to this day.

If John hadn’t brought it up in his careful and deliberate attempts at prompting Harold during their walk with Bear, Harold might have managed to ignore the roads his mind was leading him down. He thought about the peculiar similarities between himself and Edwards. His near-carried-out murder of Alicia Corwin, Edwards’ seconds-away-from-completion plan to kill himself and frame Wyatt Morris. How he was the one who successfully talked the man down, despite his usual default to John’s skills in disarming people or at least distracting them long enough to take physical actions in preventing violence.

He was glad that his experiences of pain allowed him to prevent Edwards from making the decision he had been so close to making himself when he made his final phone call to Alicia, ignoring the Machine’s phonebooth-delivered pleas to reconsider. He remembers the ringing in his ears as he narrated his accusal, just enough out of sight, how he could hardly hear himself speak over the sound of the explosion, the sound of emergence medical staff, the sound of Nathan making no sound, that was pounding in his ears.

With a few minor adjustments, Harold was sure that Edwards had been clouded by those noises as well. He thought about how as the scene went down, Edwards seemed only to exist within himself, a broken man with no hope but that of the awfully promising feeling of revenge. Not as someone within the world at large, not as a man who had happened to step into a photographer’s meticulously planned frame and then grew to love her enough that his eyes still lit up when patients enquired about the smiling person framed on his desk.

_At least he gets to talk about her to them. At least he can tell stories of her, can tell people what she was to him, what they were together. What they had planned to be for the rest of their lives._

Bear came up and nudged his hand as if he sensed Harold’s thoughts going down an upsetting path. Harold was grateful for the company, but he was also lonely for someone to _talk to_. But he didn’t want to talk to anyone, did he? That would mean yielding his prized aloofness, it would mean admitting that his past life was made up of more than Grace, more than his aliases, more than himself as a tech-savvy teen frantically trying to preserve his father’s memory.

 _They don’t even know that_ , he realized. Harold felt stuck between wishing those in his life now were clued into his life then and maintaining the secrecy, the _possession_ of those memories—incorruptible and unexploitable when kept hidden safely in his own mind. His alone.

He remembers how John had turned his face away, probably shutting down a train of thought leading to Jessica.

Harold knew about her, of course, through his intense evaluation of John before that fatefully day. He knew about her before he ever looked at John as a potential asset to his work with the numbers, Jessica having been one of the ones he failed to help. The guilt that he felt upon researching John, trumped only by the desperation Harold saw when John was eventually arrested before Harold came to meet him for the first time.

“ _You need a job.”_

And now, here they were. Hours upon hours, trust built through protection and care. John’s “I think… I think I’m happy?” and Bear splattering bathwater over the two of them and Harold measuring John for some tailoring. These memories were warm.

He had never wanted a friend out of this work with the Machine. After the disaster with Dillinger, he had made himself promise not to want that at all. No sharing his drink order (it might be drugged). No explaining his injuries (they might be specifically exploited). No sharing. He might get hurt for it. A hurt that would far outweigh the one he felt as his body fell on the floor after the Dillinger had done that to him.

But he had done those things again, more or less. He remembers the first time John brought him Sencha green tea, when John learned how to adjust his walking pace to match Harold’s, when he showed him in little ways that he was learning, that he wanted to learn more. John wasn’t his employee. They were equals in this wild endeavor from the very beginning, even if they hesitated to acknowledge it.

But were they truly equal if Harold couldn’t grant John the same level of knowledge he had about his past? He had been _on the case,_ had been the one who failed to prevent Jessica’s death at the hands of that horrific man. He had seen the blankness in John’s stare as he passed him by in the hospital, had had to hold back his apologies as they would’ve (should’ve) been impossible, nonsensical.

His skill at research, about finding a number here, an assignment there, a temporary base somewhere else, had allowed him to construct a thorough-enough portrait of John’s life that would have made every secret agency jealous to know a potential recruit so well. Harold felt an imbalance there. Even if they were equals in their duties to the Machine and with the numbers, Harold felt something unequal about how much of himself John had. It was like their labeling as admin and primary asset.

Harold felt like it wasn’t fair that they have different ranking designations to the Machine, but then again it did need to recognize the different roles they played. That was okay, he thought. But it didn’t quite sit well with him that he had basically turned down John’s attempts to figure out more about how this case had affected him earlier that day.

He would tell John. If he could. If he had even the faintest idea of how to go about such a thing. Harold had spent so long maintaining his indecipherability that he no longer remembered how to do anything else. He had watched as Root gradually blended into their team dynamic, had even watched as she flirted with Shaw without hesitation or embarrassment.

Harold was slightly jealous, but in an admiring way, of how Root let herself _want_ , had let them know who she was, how she became who she was today, and who she would be if she was with them. It may have been a rocky start, rockier, even, if one went all the way back to the day she, acting as Caroline Turing, had kidnapped Harold after killing Alicia Corwin.

And then John had had to know her. To save him. _To eventually save her_ , Harold mused. He wondered what Root would be doing now if she hadn’t made the choice to stick with them, to stay with them after they had investigated her childhood after they knew what she used to do.

 _We know her and she stays,_ he thought _. She let us know her. She knows every day that we know her and it doesn’t ruin anything. It makes it better, not having to worry about keeping your secrets, about blocking others out, about watching what you say, what you might give away._

Harold wanted to be more like Root. He wanted to let John know what he felt earlier that day, he wanted to have answered John’s questions rather than turned him down as he had.

He remembers when Root had called him on it. Trying to get him to let her out of that cage in the Library, she had hit where it hurt and asked him if he really wanted John to end up like _the other ones._ He didn’t know if she had meant Nathan, Dillinger, or anyone else Harold had gotten hurt in his life, but she was right. He remembered Shaw’s teasing as they all prepared to go to the museum in search of the antiques thief they would later come to know as Kelli Lin. _Hate to interrupt this mildly erotic moment, gents,_ Sameen had said, the classic deadpan breaking the tension of Harold valiantly restraining himself from tying John’s bowtie for him _._ Of course they knew. Of course they saw.

He didn’t want to think about that anymore. He had mastered the skills of hiding in plain sight, of planning out his every move and expression to get exactly what he wanted out of any situation. He just couldn’t accept the fact that he had been so oblivious, so _obvious_. It was Nathan all over again, no matter how hard he tried to pretend otherwise. He couldn’t go through that again. 

If he could go back to his teenage years, college, even, he would tell his younger self to just admit it. To admit the way he looked at Nathan. To admit the way he wanted him.

Despite all of its groundbreaking capabilities, though, the Machine hadn’t quite allowed for time travel. So here he was. Like this, with John, with Nathan and without Nathan.

-

Bear’s tail wagged excitedly as Harold reached down, leash in hand. Harold loved how the dog never got tired of their daily walks, even after all of the years they had been together. Bear was now officially a service dog; he had taken well to the trainings and passed the certifications with ease a few years ago once everything had settled post-Samaritan. Harold was glad that he had made the decision to seek this sort of assistance for himself. It was easier to navigate the crowded streets of the city (as well as the crowded depths of his mind) with a friend in tow, ready to help him make his way through the streams of people or to notice when he was getting overwhelmed.

He started on their usual path, a less-crowded trail that led to the open space that always had some sort of street-musician or free-lance artist set-up on the nicely cultivated greenery. He took in the views, the warmth of the sun, the freshness of the breeze.

Sometimes John joined him on these morning expeditions, but he had developed a tendency to sleep in much later than Harold liked to go walking over the time they had been living together. One day as he quietly got out of their bed, John still lost in sleep, he wondered if this change in habit was reflective of the new, more relaxing lifestyle they had allowed themselves after narrowly escaping Samaritan’s downfall with their lives. 

Root and Shaw had continued much the same line of work, assisting the other ‘teams’ the Machine had apparently concocted through the years—made up of numbers they had helped or saved—and other times they traveled, putting their magnitude of skills to use when they found a good cause in need of a pair of highly capable operatives like themselves.

Harold was glad for them. Comparatively younger than he and John were, they had a lot more exploring and adventuring that they wanted to do together. After the restoration of the Machine in some capacity was accomplished, John asked Harold if he wanted to start staying with him, as that was how they had ended up more often than not at that point in their relationship anyway. Uninterested in holding his feelings back any longer, Harold easily accepted the offer. The one thing, though, was that Harold didn’t want to live in the apartment John had. It had been Nathan’s, after all.

It was a safe house, it was where John was, and it was where Nathan had been. Harold thought he was being innocuous when he gifted the apartment that was held in his (fake) name to John at the start of their work with the Machine, but eventually, John had figured out how the property came to be in Harold’s possession. He never asked about it, too polite and grateful for the offering of a home, or at least a place he felt like he belonged in after he had wandered on his own, lost in grief, for so long.

As he continued to let his mind wander over what had become of them all in these relatively peaceful years, his eye caught on a walker heading in the opposite direction. His eyes identified the man before his conscious mind made the recognition—

“Harold?”

It was none other than Dr. Shane Edwards. He looked well, infinitely more composed than he had been when he shook with a gun in his hand, pointed at Wyatt Morris, the man he blamed for his wife’s death without conclusive proof. Much more composed than when he had turned it on himself and pleaded with Harold to participate in his plan to frame Wyatt Morris, before Harold had talked him down and John had disarmed him. He looked happy, too, like the expression he had when the person who shared his office building space—Becca, Harold remembered—had suggested they go and walk his dog Hector together.

And there they were, Harold realized. Both of them. All three, actually. Edwards held his dog’s leash in his left hand and Becca’s hand in his right.

Harold felt a pang in his chest, just sweet enough not to be painful. That number was a difficult one for him. The stakes were high, the tension was palpable at the end, and Harold had been soaking in memories and once-forgotten feelings for the duration of the case, not to mention during his near-overwhelming reflection of the parallelism apparent in his and Edwards’ lives, losses, and loves.

“Ah, Dr. Edwards. It’s been quite a while.” Harold couldn’t help but wish John were here to see this.

Becca glanced over at Harold and then redirected her attention to Edwards, her raised eyebrows communicating her unfamiliarity with the man he had just addressed.

“We’re old associates, Becca,” Edwards said as he smiled. “Harold here gave me some business advice a couple of years ago when I was having trouble doing the work I wanted to do with my nonprofit.”

“I admit I didn’t expect to run into you again, Dr. Edwards. How’s the practice?”

“Call me Shane, please. There’s no need for formality when you’ve helped me so much.”

Harold nodded, eyes smiling. “Shane.”

“And everything is going well, better than I’d ever thought possible back then.”

Memories of that night were rushing back to Harold. When he had arrived at the botanical garden to find Shane, who he had sat in a therapy session with only a little while ago, holding Wyatt Morris at gunpoint. The fear he felt at watching the possibility of becoming a witness to the sort of vengeful murder he himself had once been seconds away from carrying out. The shock when Shane had turned the gun around and explained his plan to frame Morris for his death, pleading with Harold to act as an accomplice who would confirm the story Shane had so meticulously plotted out. The steeling of his nerves as John had arrived, allowing Harold to talk Shane down until John eventually disarmed him without resistance.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Harold said simply.

Shane seemed content with that reply but didn’t move to continue walking or end the conversation. Harold was glad. Something in him wanted to keep talking to him, to know how his life had changed since their brief acquaintance all those years ago.

“It’s nice to meet you! I’m Becca. I don’t think we’ve met before, which is strange because I do know _a lot_ of his business associates,” she said. Harold was glad that the shock of seeing Shane again worked doubly to help him appear unfamiliar with Becca. Becca twisted her grip in Shane’s hand and gestured to her watch as she looked up at him. “We told Lacey and Jill we’d be there by 10:15 when the brunch menu starts up. I can take Hector and just meet you there if you want to stay and chat here a little while.”

Harold hated the idea of interrupting their plans. He especially didn’t want to feel the flood of memories from that number wash over him any more than necessary. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to infringe on your morning.”

He moved to get Bear walking again, but Shane held up a hand as if to indicate he had something further to say.

“Hey, would you want to meet up for coffee or something this week? There’s this new place a couple of blocks from my office that Becca just tried with a friend, they gave it rave reviews!” Shane smiled over to Becca. “We could catch up. It’s called ‘A Sip of Sunlight.’ What about Tuesday at four?”

Harold, for the first time in a good long while, was taken aback. He knew that the numbers and people related to the cases that he and the rest of the team had helped out in various ways were often very thankful, but he had never really had a standing personal connection to any of them post-case. The idea that Shane was not only willingly and actively remembering that time in his life, but inviting Harold to spend time with him years after the matter was surprising in the best ways. If Nathan could see this now, Harold thought. Nathan had known _this_ from the beginning. The innate and equal value of all people, the happiness and joy of getting to experience life with others. The complete rejection of the concept of irrelevancy. Hector barked playfully and pulled Shane in Bear’s direction, and Becca let out a laugh as she too was dragged over.

“That would be wonderful. I’d like that very much,” he answered, feeling only a little hesitant. If Shane was brave enough to live with the memories of those times, to stand here happily with Becca after once seeing no path forward in life due to his wife Lucy’s death, then maybe Harold could be brave enough for a cup of coffee—or tea, he hoped—with him.

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

A nd with that, Shane and Becca continued on their walk, slowly at first since their dog was reluctant to part with the new friend he had found in Bear.

Harold was left with his thoughts (and Bear, of course) and decided that he would take the longer route back home this morning. He’d probably still make it back before John woke up.

-

“You’re back late.”

“And you’re up early.”

Harold was greeted with the smell of eggs benedict and Sencha green as he and Bear entered the apartment.

That was the first piece of himself that Harold had given away to John, all of those years ago. Not the tea, he couldn’t bring himself to do that after Dillinger, but the eggs benedict. It had been at the diner after managing one of their first numbers together, a successful day. Harold had finally answered John’s prodding about his favorite order at the diner. He knew that back then it had just been John trying to learn if he frequented that location, but thinking about it now it felt like much more. It was the first time that Harold had consciously let himself become more known with John, the first time he had shared something of himself regardless of the fear of being hurt by it.

It was the little things, he thought, that built you up something big and whole and loving. It was hard, over the years, but he had let himself _be_ more and more. With Will, with Grace, with Root, with Shaw, and with John—especially John.

“Do you want me to heat that up for you?”

Oh. The eggs were cold.

Harold apologized and let John reheat the plate. Before he came back to the table, Harold gave an elevator pitch version of his earlier run-in with Shane Edwards, still too affected by the interaction to tell it thoughtfully.

“It was just strange. Not necessarily in a bad way, but so out-of-the-ordinary that it’s taking me much more than it should to process such a short encounter.”

“You don’t _have_ to meet him for coffee. If it brought back too much.”

“No. We didn’t exchange contact information or anything, and I’d hate for him to wait and I not show up. I want to, I just have to convince myself that I want to.”

John sighed. “I remember him. I remember when we walked him back to his apartment after he gave up the gun and let that guy—what was his name?”

“Wyatt Morris.”

“—let that guy Morris go at that garden.” John stood to clean up their dishes and Harold was surprised at how thankful he felt for the space. “It was like he didn’t know what to do. When he was back home but had let go of his plan to frame Morris for his death. I didn’t think he would cause any harm, really, but just seeing him there… He looked so lost. Hopeless, I guess. Sitting in the grief but not being able to climb out of it for the life of him, you know?”

Harold did know. He knew it in an old photograph. He knew it in a car bomb trigger half an inch away from being pressed. He knew it in a voice modulator on a threatening and accusatory phone call to a certain government agent. He knew it in the little things too. The books he could pick out from the old Library’s neverending shelves (his favorites), the way he never seemed to forget his birthday, the way his son called him uncle.

And most of all, Harold knew it in himself.

He knew the almost-crushing weight of being _without_ , of being without the person who had shaped him and his life in every way imaginable. Of being without him, but seeing him everywhere, in everything, himself most of all. How he learned from Nathan.

“—and I’m glad Edwards has been able to move on from that as his one aim in life,” John continued.

He had missed a good bit of whatever John had just said, too lost in his thoughts to stay in the moment. But that was okay. Being lost in thoughts was infinitely preferable to being lost for words, he thought. He knew John wouldn’t pry and was glad for it, even though he did feel a little guilty for not giving John his full attention.

Harold figured that John was done reminiscing about the number. Harold figured that _he_ should be done reminiscing about Nathan.

“He looked very well,” Harold offered. “I always hoped that he and Becca would—” He stopped, realizing that he hadn’t told John about the pen-camera footage he had watched live the day after helping save Shane all those years ago. He had watched it by himself and left once Shane looked enthused by Becca’s offer to walk the dog together sometime. 

He almost wanted to laugh at himself now as he looked back, remembering how he took Bear to go meet John for a stroll just after watching Becca propose the same thing to Shane. And here they all were now: two happy pairs with their respective dogs. Harold knew the similarities between himself and Shane were why the case had stood out so in his mind both during and long after it all occurred, and he supposed that was why everything came back in such force to him now. 

John had tried to ask him about his noticeably empathetic interactions with Shane then, but Harold remembered how intent he was on deflecting any inquiry of that sort at that point. He just couldn’t talk to John about Nathan. Maybe he could now. Back then, being faced with such a reflection of his own grief and anger in Shane had been too much for him to think about, let alone consider sharing with John. He was embarrassed, he was confused, and, above all, he was resolved not to bring up Nathan any more than was absolutely necessary, especially not to John. Harold figured he was still a lot of those things to varying degrees now, but he also felt the security in his and John’s relationship as a safety net to those challenging emotions. Maybe he could tell him.

“Sorry,” Harold restarted. He would lean into it, dip his figurative toes into the water that was telling John about the tumultuous feelings he had been dealing with at the time of Shane’s number and the fact that he still lived with them, although they were now diluted by time and self-understanding. “Do you remember that pen I made?”

“The one with the camera that turned on when you pressed the cap?” John chucked. “Yeah, Harold, that was a good one. At least in your top five unconventionally efficient electronics, I’ll say.”

“Still nowhere near outdoing your trick with my glasses though,” Harold returned.

John smiled. “Well now, that was a specialty. I learned that one a _long_ time ago.”

He relaxed into the easiness of his and John’s conversing; they had gotten so used to each other over the years, from working together, to getting together, and now living together on top of all of that. It was nice.

“Whoever would teach such a thing? Some rogue eyewear specialist?” he joked.

“Close. It was Kara, actually,” John said plainly. “One time we needed to track this guy, but he changed clothes so often it was impossible to tag him on a jacket or even shoes! It was so frustrating; every time he got into his car or got back to his hotel, one of his aides was waiting with a fresh change of clothes. The only thing he kept on constantly was his glasses.” He shrugged. “So we worked with that. Kara was the one to figure out how to implant the tracking device where he wouldn’t notice it, and she somehow managed to get it right on his pair after screwing up on the five we’d gotten for practice. We had to wait until he went swimming one night.”

Harold admired how easily John could share his past. His people. One day, he could be like that. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but he knew he could.

John continued, and Harold started mentally planning how he would get himself to a place to be able to talk to John about the whirlwind of feelings that were happening.

-

“It’s been too long, Harry.”

He could hear that playful smile in her voice from a mile away. “You and Sameen are the ones traveling so often that it makes it difficult for us all to get together.”

Root laughed. The sound of it lightened something in Harold’s chest. He remembered a time when the mere thought of her had him frozen in an intersection, alone in his panic because they hadn’t yet added Bear to the team. How strange it was, looking back on the progression of their friendship. If anyone had told him the person who dragged him around, leaving John to chase them down while she went on and on about _bad code_ would eventually become one of the most important people in his life, he’d have laughed. But here they were, and she was right—it had been too long. 

He took off his jacket as he walked through the doorway of her apartment. She gestured for him to follow her to the table, and he followed after unclipping the leash from Bear’s harness.

She looked so well. It was truly wondrous what support and understanding could enable a person to do. Harold thought about the tension that weighed heavily in their interactions at first, the lack of trust for all the right reasons. Then, she had been willing to make herself part of their team. Having that, meeting Sameen, working with the Machine; Root had undergone a drastic diversion from her previous ways, and Harold felt lucky to have been a part of it.

They exchanged the basics, going back and forth to address the common topics of two people catching up with each other. She and Sameen had just arrived back from a job a continent away and would now be back in the city for at least a couple of months. They were doing well, and they had also been keeping in contact with the other teams the Machine had assembled, sharing resources and strategies when they could. She mentioned one particularly funny situation where success somehow hinged on Shaw _not_ beating up whoever they were up against, something about running interference against cops to assist a direct action group.

“I’m glad to hear that they handled that better than I somehow feel like John would have,” he said with a grin.

Root shook her head, the fondness for her partner plain on her face. “So I am, apparently.” She looked down and checked her phone. “Sorry Shaw’s not back home yet. When I said you should come over at three I thought they’d be back by now.”

“Oh, it’s alright. I know Sameen does enjoy their get-togethers with those… very exciting people.” Harold was, of course, referring to the heist-crew that Sameen had worked with during their very brief yet extremely unhappy employment as a perfume salesperson at the start of their hiding in plain sight from Samaritan. He debated the likelihood of Sameen enjoying such a social engagement. The apparently easy coalescence of the group meant that Sameen was comfortable with them, so they probably were truly enjoying themself there.

“I don’t know quite what I was expecting when I set them up to be their get-away driver, but it sure wasn’t yearly lunch meet-ups. Hopefully Sameen will be back before you go.”

Harold tried to imagine John in a booth crammed with ex-coworkers. For all of the similarities John and Sameen shared, relationships with old affiliations certainly didn’t make the list.

“I can stay for however long.” He assessed that imposition and rephrased: “I don’t have anywhere to be today, really.”

“You know you’re welcome whenever and however long you want, Harry. We _love_ to see you. And bring John around some time, it’s been a while since we’ve gotten together.” Root stood and motioned for them to make their way over to the couch instead, anticipating a longer visit. Harold appreciated her quiet care for his comfort, and he knew she felt the same from him as he sat to her left out of lasting habit.

Harold felt lucky to have such friends. After Arthur, there was no one left who _knew_ him from the old days, before he went deep into the fake identities and protective covers. For a long time, he had doubted that he would ever find himself with such companionship again, given the secrecy and solitude he thought served to protect himself and others. It was with the gradual acceptance of John, Sameen, and Root into his life that he realized he could have that still. Bear also deserved credit in that regard, he figured, the dog’s protectiveness and steady presence had helped him in a multitude of ways through the years.

He supposed that this was as good a point as any to bring up what was weighing on his mind, Root unknowingly having done the work of bringing up John in their conversation.

“It has been some time, hasn’t it. I’ll bring it up with him and see if we can all work out a time to go out for dinner or something of the sort.”

“I’d like that,” Root replied.

“On a related note, I’m wondering if I can ask your advice on something.” Harold shifted around a little in his position on the couch, trying to quell his discomfort with the subject he was about to broach.

She nodded. “Ask away. It’ll be like old times when we were roommates in the Subway.”

“It’s about Shane Edwards, the number I mentioned earlier. Well, not about _him_ , exactly, but about everything his case brought back for me. Everything it _brings_ back, apparently, given that I’m distressed over it even now. What’s really the matter is that I want to talk to John about it, but I don’t know if I can.”

It was hard to make the jump into what he specifically wanted to talk about. Bringing up his past with Nathan, his abysmal attempt at adjustment to life without Nathan, and anything of the sort was still difficult for him. He had gotten better about being open about his life in general with John, but Nathan was something different. Something Harold wanted to keep just for himself, even when it hurt. He knew, objectively, that it didn’t need to be like that. It was just that letting it out felt near impossible when it had all sat and stewed inside him for so long.

Root’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Things take time. There’s nothing wrong with giving yourself space to figure out what you need to before you let other people into it with you.”

Her reassurance calmed him but didn’t quite embolden him to start detailing the daunting mess of _me-Nathan-Alicia-John-Bear and Shane-Lucy-Wyatt-Becca-Hector_ floating around in his mind.

Once Harold’s silence lasted enough to indicate that he wasn’t going to respond, Root picked her point back up. “Do you remember when Shaw told us they were non-binary? How they said they knew we would all react well and that it was just a sort of casually important thing they wanted to share, but that it still took them a while to say it out loud to other people, even us.”

“I do remember that.”

_It had been a casual day in the Subway a few months after the takedown of Samaritan. The team had been run pretty ragged through their efforts at their own recuperation as well as their eventually successful revival of the Machine. That day, though, they had all decided to take a much-needed break from Machine-related stress and spend time renovating the Subway._

_John had brought up the fact that they didn’t really need to keep it as their base now that Samaritan’s all-seeing eyes were closed for good, but they had all grown to feel comfortable in the space and wanted to maintain it for whatever they might get into next._

_Root was in her favorite fuzzy slippers helping Harold set up new wall hooks for their computer monitors when Sameen had returned from their trip to get their favorite sandwich_ (‘pastrami, extra mustard - spicy and yellow, enough pepperoncinis to create digestion issues,’ and absolutely _no_ mayonnaise _, Harold had remembered). As Sameen had passed around everyone else’s lunch orders, they had said that they had something to say._

_With Sameen, Harold had thought, it could really be anything. A judgment of Root’s decorating or a joke about being Bear’s favorite human, maybe. When he realized that Sameen was waiting for their collective attention, however, he made sure to turn and look at them._

_He and the others listened as Sameen told them that they were non-binary. Sameen had talked about how a lot of other bi people they had met through the years were non-binary, but that they hadn’t really considered their own thoughts about gender until recently. They told the group that they wanted to try out they/she pronouns and were still fine with going by their first or last name. “I guess I just realized I don’t have to be a girl,” they had explained. “That all sexualities can include non-binary genders. It just feels nice.”_

_Harold was glad that Sameen wanted to share and was comfortable doing so. He knew that Root and John felt the same, and he really admired Sameen’s willingness to speak genuinely about an important personal topic with such ease. He knew that Sameen didn’t feel things exactly the same way he or most other people did, but that didn’t make their poise and self-assuredness any less laudable to him._

_After everyone communicated their acknowledgments and congratulations to Sameen, they promptly sunk down onto the couch that Root had just finished piling up with fluffy pillows an hour earlier. They let out a tired exhale before starting to speak again. “That was hard. I didn’t even think I was going to do that today.” Root sat down next to them and Sameen tilted over to rest their head on her shoulder. “When I was waiting in line for our sandwiches I saw a person with a really cool leather jacket and one of the patches they had on it was the non-binary flag, and I kind of just decided that today was the day.” They shrugged, and Harold saw John briefly smile at their friend’s nonchalance._

_“I know a good Redbubble shop if you want any stuff like that, sweetie,” he had heard Root say, “but it might mess up your Super Cool Spy Who Only Wears Black look.”_

Root looked at him. “Things take time to realize. Even longer, then, to share. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it just means you need a little more time to feel ready.”

“It’s just…” Harold stalled. “It’s just _so much_. I’ve tried not to think about him for so long and seeing Shane and remembering that number made it clear how poor of strategy that’s been.”

“Nathan?” Root prompted, gentle.

He knew she had already guessed at what was troubling him; she was too smart (and too good a friend) not to notice the little things over time and put it all together. “I worry that if I merge these parts of my life I’ll never truly get over it. Having to go back through my memories _and_ integrate that into my life now——it’ll be like washing contrasting colors together and ruining both.”

“We don’t live our lives in sections. It’s all you.”

“But… Isn’t that unfair to John? How could I tell him that I’m still emotional over someone I met in _college_?”

“Harry,” Root began. “It’s _all_ you. Already. What you had with Nathan was a big part of your life. What you learned through that, how you grew—it shapes everything. You can’t just disconnect from that as if it’s some separable part of your personality. There’s nothing wrong with processing over time. There’s no timeline for feelings.”

“Thank you. Thinking back, I was definitely shaken by the similarities between mine and Shane’s experiences during our involvement with him as a number. Seeing him again after all this time brought that back and it seemed even more out of place because of how happy I am.”

Root nodded. “I feel like you just need to let yourself feel it. Even though I definitely didn’t have the teen coming of age movie coming out experience, there were so many times when I felt embarrassed for not realizing I was a lesbian sooner. I was always so smart, I was the best in all of my classes, I was always so on top of everything, everyone knew how close my best friend Hanna and I were, and there was just so much I prided myself on in the vein of self-awareness that I really struggled to forgive myself for not recognizing things sooner, I guess. It was really hard for me, especially since I was alone.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Harold offered. Something in the way she had said it told him he could though. He did. The realization of it was a shock even though it shouldn’t have been. It had been so long. He had kept it in for _so long_.

“Eventually, I just got to a point where I stopped beating myself up for not magically recognizing a gay crush as an elementary schooler… there’s a lot out there that makes us not want to feel who we are. It’s scary—it’s terrifying more often than not. But that’s why we find each other and reshape our worlds for ourselves. And we can’t do that if we hate ourselves for how we protected ourselves, whether that was with repression or secrecy or literally anything.”

Harold considered her words. “You really didn’t need to act much to pass as a therapist.”

“Maybe not, except now I’m here as your friend and we _know_ each other. I will give you a line from my therapist, though, the one I started with last year: ‘We have to honor our coping mechanisms. They got us through whatever we were experiencing. We don’t need to judge ourselves for anything.’”

“Hmm.” The words resonated with him, really. _Honor them._ What a way to feel, to generate self-love rather than shame. 

“Good, huh?” Root smiled. “I can _vividly_ remember sleepovers in elementary school where we would play all those silly games. ‘Truth or dare,’ ‘would you rather,’ you know. I can laugh now but I remember being so confused when the other girls would ask about kissing or marrying with a choice of two random boys in ‘would you rather.’ I just picked whichever one my friends seemed to like the best and never really thought on it more than that.”

She laughed as she finished, and Harold felt a bit of his tension dissipate as well.

-

John smiled as he walked in. “How did it go?” 

“Surprisingly well.” 

“A little more casual than our first reunion with Logan Pierce, huh?”

Harold laughed. “Absolutely.” He sat down, feeling the tangible distinction between his earlier nervousness and current calm. “I was worried for no reason.”

“You said you wanted to talk to me about something when you got back? Are you up for that still?”

 _John’s unfailing memory strikes again._ He always found the ways to draw up conversations that Harold needed yet dreaded. Truly, Harold knew it had only been a couple of hours, but it was easier to attribute John’s kindness to his skill rather than his heart. It was a lot to receive.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

John set their respective mugs of tea and coffee down between them. “I’m all ears.”

“It wasn’t that I was worried about _Shane_ , it was what seeing him would do to me? It’s not like he was threatening or otherwise worrisome—besides everything with Wyatt Morris of course—but I meant he was never a threat to _me._ So I was having trouble figuring out why I was so nervous to meet up with him, why seeing him in the park the other day gave me such a strong reaction.”

He looked up to see John calming staring back at him, no judgment. Harold took a deep breath and sighed. He wanted to get this over with.

He continued, “And do you know what it was? It was the ridiculous parallelism of he and I! In the moment of it all those years ago I absolutely managed to repress it but I think about it now and it was just so clearly _there._ Do you remember how we took a walk with Bear after his case resolved?”

“Yeah.”

“Right before that, I was watching him in his office on the pen-camera I planted. Becca, who he’s with now, was asking him again to walk the dog together sometime and he finally agreed. And it…”

John hummed, encouraging.

“And it just hit me to hard back then to even process it. I had already gone out on such a limb the night before using my—scarily similar experience with that specific sort of retributive grief to talk down Shane. And I saw it, on some level I _knew_ what I was thinking. I just couldn’t say it. Not to myself, not to anyone, _especially_ not you.”

“You don’t have to,” John said. There was never any demand with things like this. That made it easier. It wasn’t a requirement, but a choice, an active choice to share and trust.

Harold had spent too many years hating himself for loving Nathan. No longer. He wanted to say so many things—and even though it was immensely difficult—he would.

“You know enough, I know you’ve known enough for a long time to put most of it together. I detest that it’s so hard for me to say it out loud. This has been so much of me for so long but it’s all been locked away inside… it’s like I’ve been stuck in 2010 and the 30 years with him prior to it and I just can’t—”

“I think you deserve to give yourself more credit than that,” John offered.

“I assure you I really don’t. It’s not that I’d _rather_ have him. I got past wishing I could change things a long time ago. That was probably the hardest part of it all. But I just feel such guilt that I still _miss him_ so much sometimes. If I’m sitting here with you and some silly little detail or throwaway sentence reminds me of him so quickly, what does that say about me in the context of our relationship?” Harold’s reply was harsher than he’d have liked. The explanative case he thought to offer might just lead him deeper down into this awful mix of embarrassment and guilt, but he figured now was the time for it all. “Like when I was drugged during the Jordan Hester identity fiasco, and you took me back to the Library after Detective Fusco collected me from that apartment.”

“Yeah.” John let that sit for a moment. “Do you remember what I told you after you that, when you woke up back to normal?”

“After I had the _mortifying_ realization that I had called you ‘Nathan,’ you mean?” he groaned.

John rolled his eyes fondly. “Yes, Harold, after that.”

“You told me there was nothing wrong with having memories of him pop up in that circumstance, with me being _impaired_ and all.”

“You’re missing the important part, Harold.” John’s soft scolding never failed to fulfill its function as the final push of encouragement Harold needed.

He hesitated. “...You said that I didn’t need to be embarrassed, drugged or not. You said that my conflation of you and him wasn’t disrespectful and that I didn’t need to give you my apologies…”

“There we go,” John said.

“I still— I just don’t know if I can fully believe that.” Wasn’t it wrong of him to compare John to Nathan? He remembered the early days of working with John, just the two of them in the Library with the cryptic numbers. He thought about the first time John patted his arm, just like Nathan did. The time John’s laugh made his eyes crinkle just like Nathan’s. The way he knew how to match John’s walking pace since he and Nathan had the same height and gait.

Well—maybe he didn’t know that one all the same. After Nathan… he had had to learn to walk again; different, forever changed. Still, it was just an evergrowing collection of small things with John that made Harold think about Nathan from time to time: a joke John would tell, the take-out they’d order, the way it felt when he held him.

John drew him out of his mind. “It’s okay that you feel that. I wish you didn’t, of course, but it’s not something bad. You had a life before you met me. I had a life before I met you. Nothing wrong with that. We don’t exist in sections of a timeline.”

“It just makes me feel so bad, like I don’t really care about you or that I wish it was him instead or—”

“You’re allowed to say his name, you know? Harold, I promise it doesn’t hurt me that you think about the people in your life you’ve loved or that you want to talk about any of them, for any reason. There will _never_ be anything wrong with that, and that applies to anyone in the world!”

“I know you’re right, objectively. I do. It’s as if I’m _stuck_ in this state of remembering him—remembering Nathan—in a myriad of ways and I just feel like that isn’t meant to be compatible with me being with you if I’m not even aware enough of myself to just be over it all by now.”

“Maybe it’s not so much you being stuck as it is you finally being a place where you have the space and support needed to let yourself process over 30 years of feelings.”

Of course John would figure him out faster than he did himself. It was embarrassing and—

No. Harold thought back to Root’s words. _Honor our coping mechanisms_.

Whatever sort of weird repression-soup his brain had cooked up over the decades, he couldn’t hate it. It was just him. He hadn’t been ready to think about what he felt for Nathan, not in college, not during their IFT years, surely not after, and surely not truly until now. He felt safe in the love from John, Root, Sameen, and the others they kept in touch with.

“You don’t need to magically get over everything in an hour,” John started, “but I just need you to know that I’m here for you. That there’s nothing wrong with whatever you’re feeling, even if you don’t even know what that exactly is yet. It’s okay to just have to sit through it sometimes, or sit with it.”

“It really doesn’t bother you?” It was difficult to ask, but Harold needed the reassurance. He figured he could also do to work on asking for help, so why not start practicing now.

“It really doesn’t. I know I never knew Nathan, but anyone you hold in high regard—anyone who means so much to you—is not at all someone I’m offended to be similar to. You don’t conflate me with him; you have decades worth of memories and it all comes together in who you are as a person, it’s not something you need to hope you stop doing. Maybe it’ll lessen over time, the frequency with which you remember or compare things, but the way you see the world, your sense of right and wrong, your sense of yourself, who you are in your connections with others, that’s all shaped by the time and growth you had with him. And there’s nothing wrong with that. _Nothing at all._ ”

“I…” Harold was touched. Bringing this up with John, telling him what he was feeling, even if it went in a different direction than he had predicted, left him with a feeling of relief, like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. It was good not to bottle things up, and he was getting better at that, especially with John. “Thank you,” he said simply. He didn’t need to be eloquent for John to understand the importance of his words.

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone needs a space to feel some of the things that Harold feels through this, [here is my angst playlist designed specifically for this in mind](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uEYXCCwIJNgxHdBfXlTyk) ~ also known as my most-played songs over the past year!
> 
> a comment or kudos would mean the world! hope you enjoyed 11k of projection and know that if you feel anything like harold at any point through this that _that is okay_ and that i understand you and i love you


End file.
